The formation of pleats has always constituted a time consuming operation and attempts which have been made to reduce the amount of time taken to form the series of pleats have been less than satisfactory. In some instances large and expensive machines or dividing jigs have been used, but even these have proved cumbersome and often slow to use, and there are instances where they are not used according to their optimum efficiency.
The main problem which is encountered in the formation of pleats is the difficulty of forming pleats of identical size and equally spaced in curtain fabric which can vary. Dimensional variation of any one nominal width is due to the flexible nature of fabric material. The second problem is that most prior art methods have required the separate marking and tacking of pleats before they could be sewn, and this is a time consuming operation.